Freeholders Will Stay Neutral In Controversial South Jersey Gas Pipeline

Toms River, NJ - Not our problem.

That basically sums up the Ocean County Board of Freeholder's position when residents asked them to intervene in the South Jersey Natural Gas proposal to build a 22-mile long pipeline through the New Jersey Pinelands.

Residents Connie Higgins, Barnegat Light, Marianne Clemente, Barnegat and Raven Potosky, Manchester, all asked Freeholder Director Joseph H. Vicari to encourage Pinelands Commission member Alan W. Avery to deny the application at the board meeting Wednesday, according to app.com.

Avery - the Ocean County representative on the Pinelands Commission - worked with the freeholder board for years as the Ocean County Administrator before he retired.

"We need you to influence Commissioner Avery," Clemente told Vicari. "He's a decent guy. We know that he cares about the environment. It's wrong, it's wrong. It should not be happening and big business, big energy companies, think that they can just walk all over the environment and the issues in our environment."

The South Jersey Gas Cape Atlantic Reliability Project, a 22-mile long, 2-feet wide transmission pipeline from Millville in Maurice River Township in Cumberland County to Beesley’s Point in Upper Township in Cape May County.The pipeline would not enter Ocean County, but about half of the route takes it through the Pinelands.

Vicari did agree to forward letters from the residents to Avery detailing their concerns.

But he added that County Counsel John C. Saharadnik had raised ethical questions about the freeholders directly lobbying a member of the Pinelands Commission.

"So I cannot legally put any pressure," Vicari said. "(Avery) could file an ethics complaint against anyone from this board, especially me as director of this board. ... He will vote according to his conscience and he will have all the information before he votes."

Vicari also said he doesn't think it's appropriate for the Ocean County freeholder board to interfere in the affairs of other counties.

"Just as you know, Cumberland County, they don't interfere, they don't come here and tell me what to do in Ocean County," Vicari said, before he returned to the legal argument and opinion rendered by county general counsel John C. Sahradnik.

"They're entitled to use their own discretion, review the evidence and vote on the record," Sahradnik said from the end of the dais after Vicari prompted him to speak. "It would be improper for this board to try to interfere with that process and direct any person or member of the Pinelands Commission which way to vote on a particular project."

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Image: Patricia A. Miller